AGI Revolution: An Inside View of the Rise of Artificial General Intelligence

August 10, 2016

Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is the quest for the sci-fi AI dream: AI with mental autonomy, generality, adaptiveness and imagination equal to and ultimately exceeding that of humans. After decades of R&D struggles, the time for AGI is now finally near. Since the early aughts,

Dr. Ben Goertzel has been the leading force advancing the concept of AGI in the research community and the public sphere. Here he gives an insider’s account of the rise of AI and AGI from relative obscurity to their current status as the focus of large corporate and government initiatives.

He presents his understanding of the operation of the human brain, and the viability of various approaches to AGI including his own OpenCog AGI project; and also describes his efforts to use AI to solve critical issues such as human aging.

In Goertzel’s vision, AGI will soon yield dramatic changes in every area of human life and society. Advanced AGIs that vastly exceed human intelligence will bring on a Technological Singularity, quite likely within our lifetimes.

comments 7

Interesting discussion you are having here…
One is publishing books about AGI without having even slightest idea how things are working inside our brains,
the other one will have “in 2-3 years working artificial subjective system”.
No one else in the row?

Look I deciphered the algorithms inside brain, I have them ready so AGI (as you name it) is reality right now if you believe it or not.

Ben, remeber AI conference in Berlin year ago?
I wrote to organizers I will build first intelligent robots soon.
I was not joking.
Now I would like to share this information with you and discuss what to do with it.
But please seriously, I am not Arthur Murray!

Dear Ben, many years I am trying to convince you cooperate with me, but you are still refused and follow the misleading path. Sorry, but that is just time-wasting.
Our a brain did not have any access to surrounding. So, modelling of it is not sufficient for designing of an AGI.
The next problem is in attempts to design of AGI as an programmable device. That is impossible. Only artificial subjective systems could behave reasonably in prematurely unknown circumstances.
In 2-3 years I will have, in cooperation with GeckoSystems International, Co., the working artificial subjective system on the basis of its robot.
That robot will not require any further programming, and able to accrue a professional skill of a nurse.
Good luck for you too, but you are on the wrong way, sorry.

@Subjective 1, pretty bold claims you’re making… undoubtedly you have evidence to support these claims. why this mathematician and greatest minds in the world today is “on the wrong path”

How to suggest; maybe there’s a reason he rejected your inquiries over a three-year period. I looked at the group you’re claiming to be associated with, love what they’re doing. they appear to be in the Forefront of robotics. homecare artificial intelligent based bots/nurses is so needed in the world today, good luck in your venture.
P.S. I do find it a little odd that under the “About Us” section they list the owner who has an MBA and the second person they list, (and the only other person) is the secretary??? She apparently has a bachelor’s degree…

Obviously there are many benefits to a super-intelligent machine. With “deep learning” we can train machines to solve problems that we cannot, even if we don’t know exactly how. But the question of the solution of human aging does not require the intervention of machines, the basic principles are already ‘out there’, but hampered by an old way of thinking, old errors that are still believed, (like aging is random damage caused by free radicals), in spite of mountains of evidence to the contrary, that prevent our advancing in treating aging and the diseases of aging. I believe such treatments are possible right now – and even Aubrey agreed that they might work (but he never explored them).
Once it is realized that aging is a controlled process, designed to fit a species into its niche, (as its lifespan is an important species characteristic), then the mechanisms by which this is accomplished (or may be reversed) can be discovered and manipulated. Aging at the cellular level is reversible and results from signaling, it is as they say, “cell non-autonomous”. I believe human rejuvenation is possible right now, and I would like to prove it.
Harold

Ben’s insights are always worth reading, however the predictions do raise one question for me, with the possibilities that super AGI can offer does it not make sense to develop AGI as a global priority rather than almost every other area of science given that super AGI will allow solutions to be developed in a fraction of the time natural intelligence could solve them? By that I mean that in X years we can solve Y problems until AGI happens, or we can focus on mostly AGI and with it’s help solve Y^2 problems in the same X years?

I am not saying that CERN is a waste of money, but imagine if just that budget was spent on AGI and enabling technologies, would we not get a better outcome and in the medium term still end up learning more about physics anyway because AGI will be helping us to understand the data better, and exponentially faster?

we also have to ask the question of whether or not we could even solve the problems were attempting like radical life extension without AGI. Like the Chicken and the Egg we need to know which should come first and Ben does argue in some of his lectures that it may require his egg, AGI to be developed before we can realize many of the things that dr. Aubrey de grey or Ray Kurzweil predict for the future. It is disappointing to see that many projects can receive hundreds of millions of dollars in funding but yet something as important as reversing the aging process at SENS only receives five million a year, very disportionate at least in my view